


The Veil of Time

by AwesomeEyeroll



Category: Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-08
Updated: 2017-04-08
Packaged: 2018-10-16 07:47:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10566816
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AwesomeEyeroll/pseuds/AwesomeEyeroll
Summary: Set during the twenty years that Jamie and Claire are apart. 1958, Boston.





	

“Go fuck yourself” She muttered under her breath but loud enough to hear. Or loud enough to hear if the pompous bastard ever stopped his litany of all her failings as a wife and mother.   
“Really Claire, you can’t keep doing this. Just leaving events. People are starting to talk”

“Frank, it was the hospital, it was my job. It's not like I just stood up and walked out” She was exasperated. Whilst she supposed that in many respects she was lucky, Frank had supported her decision to go to medical school, understood that medicine was who she was, he was also demanding and proud. His position, both professional and social mattered to him. Claire’s demanding job as a surgeon did not fit into that.

He wasn’t listening.   
“...and Brianna, she hardly knows if she is coming or going, can you begin to imagine what it must be like for her. I do my best but a girl needs a mother, not a surgeon.”

This hit her where she bled. Brianna. Her daughter. Their daughter. The insinuation that she was failing her, that she was less than she should be to her. The memories of Jamie came thick and fast. The control she kept so meticulously, except for sometimes, in the wee small hours of the night when the veil of time seemed so thin that she could almost reach out and touch him, fell away. Brianna. All that was left of him that was not inside her head. The living breathing proof that he had lived, they had loved so, so passionately, so intensely, so briefly. Brianna, whose red hair and slanted cat like blue eyes could come only from him. God, she was so like him.

Claire reeled like she had been hit, stepping backward clutching her chest like her heart might spill from her chest without it.

“Don’t you fucking dare” she hissed as she attempted to reign in her feelings, to damp them back down where they couldn’t hurt her, where they wouldn’t threaten to consume her.

Frank rolled his eyes, her glass face clearly betraying the tsunami of emotion and memory and pain. 

“Jesus, Claire, not this again. It’s been 10 years. He’s gone, he left you high and dry and pregnant. And let’s not start that rubbish about the stones again.”

Claire fought the urge to slap him, to claw at his face. She wanted to hurt him. To visit on him all the pain she felt right in that moment. The urge obviously showed and Frank took a step back. Instead though she inhaled and exhaled slowly in an attempt to get control of her feelings. She managed it. Just. Feeling like her mind and body were disconnected she slowly walked from the kitchen, concentrating only on putting one foot in front of the other, as her knees shook and threatened to give out beneath her. 

 

She sat in the lounge room in the darkness. Brianna and Frank had both long since gone to bed. She had gone through the rest of the evening like a wraith, outwardly there but in reality not connected to her surroundings. She was drowning in pain. She thought she might die of it. She fought the urge to curl into a ball, to try and surround the pain and contain it. Jamie. He was everywhere. In the sound of Brianna laughing as she told them about her day, in the soft red gold glint of her hair under the electric lights, in the overwhelming love she felt for this child. The child he had sent her back through the stones to save. The one who they had each severed themselves from part of their souls for. Jamie had been right, she knew. They had survived. Brianna had thrived. She was tall and strong and stubborn and curious. She was safe.

“Oh Jamie” Claire felt the tears spill down her face. There alone in the dark, she closed her eyes and conjured him to her. She brought him forth and let herself feel it all. The pain, the loss, the sadness, the love. All of it.

She saw him stood tall and proud as a viking. That magnificent read hair, those broad shoulders. He stood head and shoulders above other men. She saw him as the boy on the cusp of manhood that he was when he took her to wife, when he promised her the protection of his body against anything that came, she saw him as the man, there at the stones of Craig Na Dun who made good on that vow.

She brought her hands to her lips. Closing her eyes she brought forth the feel of his lips on hers. Gentle at first, soft with promise, and then harder, his tongue searching for hers, the feel of his teeth on her bottom lip, the pounding of their hearts as they breathed each other in, hands tangled in hair, fingers on flesh, wanting, seeking, having. She brought her hand down her neck imagining the feel of his mouth on her throat, moving downward, strong arms bracing her, pulling her closer. Her own hands lost in the tangle of his curls, feeling their way across the soft skin and hard muscle of his chest and stomach. His head between her thighs, teeth nipping sensitive flesh, tongue roaming. Her voice coming louder and faster, calling his name as she fell into the precipice only to be rescued by him once again.

She gasped there alone in the dark and she remembered the feeling of him moving inside her. His hands under hips and hers on his haunches as they tried to bring each other closer, be nearer, become one. She heard the sound of him calling out as he spilled into her, crying out in gaelic, filling her ears with his rich voice as he filled her with his completion.

She imagined herself lying in his arms, alone in the dark, the two of them. Talking softly, laughing. His big hands running down her spine, their legs entangled as they slowly succumbed to sleep.

Claire awoke stiff and sore in the pale light. For a moment she was confused, “Jamie?” she thought. She bit back a sob as reality reasserted itself. She struggled to sit up, bracing herself against the chintz arm of the sofa. Her mouth tasted vaguely of whiskey. For a moment she searched for him, but the veil had closed. He was lost to her again now and it would do neither of them any good to try and bring him back. With a lingering last memory of his lips on hers, of his final words to her “I will find you”, she stood and turned. She smoothed her rumpled curls and stepped into the hall. 

“Good morning, Frank.”


End file.
